The Shattered Dark

by Sandy Williams

  Kyol stops a few paces away and gives me a slight nod. It’s the way he always acknowledged me in front of Atroth and other Court fae. Detached but respectful.

  “We didn’t tell the high nobles about Sethan,” Aren says. His posture has changed. Before Kyol entered, he was annoyed at Lena, but he was relaxed. He’s not relaxed anymore. His left hand, which was resting casually on his sword’s hilt, has dropped to his side, and his right is now loose and open, ready to draw the blade if he needs to. He won’t need to, though. Kyol has sworn to protect Lena, and he’d never do anything to hurt me. Aren knows that. I don’t think he’s aware of the subtle change in his posture.

  “We didn’t tell them about Sethan because we knew Atroth would attack Haeth if he knew who we were,” Lena says, referring to the city she and her brother grew up in. Sethan was the fae the rebels intended to put on the throne, but he was killed by the Court fae outside of Vancouver. If he were still alive, I think the transition to a new ruler would be going much more smoothly. He was prepared to be king, wanted it. Lena’s a different story.

  “Maybe no one is convinced you would be different,” I say to Lena. “They might be afraid you’ll attack their homes and friends just like they attacked yours.” Then, reluctantly, I add, “They associate the rebellion with Brykeld.”

  Mentioning the city’s name puts the taste of smoke on my tongue. Aren’s known as the Butcher of Brykeld. That’s one of a dozen reasons why I hated him when we met. He wasn’t actually there when one of his men gave orders to seal families inside their homes and burn the city, but most fae don’t know or don’t believe that. I didn’t believe it until I got to know him better, until I saw the pain of the memory in his eyes.

  He looks at me now, his expression uncharacteristically closed off. He knows I have issues with some of the things he did to overthrow King Atroth, and I think he’s afraid I can’t get over his past. I’m working on it. This world isn’t my world. It’s more violent, more archaic. On the one hand, I understand that. On the other, doing things like exposing fae to tech until they break or turn tor’um is wrong. The sudden loss of magic makes them go mad. That’s why human technology is banned from the Realm—too much exposure cripples them for life.

  I can’t accept Aren doing that or anything like it ever again. It’s one of the many reasons I’m trying to take things slowly with him. We still have things we need to talk about.

  “Perhaps we’re dealing with a false-blood,” Lena says into the silence, a silence that grows heavier as we consider the possibility. That’s something we don’t need to deal with right now. I’ve hunted many false-bloods in the last decade, all in an effort to prevent them from gaining enough support to overthrow the king. Most of them were easy to capture. Most couldn’t prove they were Descendants of the Tar Sidhe, so they never had a big, loyal following. But for some false-bloods, that lack of proof didn’t matter. They gained enough support, with either cunning or brute force, to be dangerous. Thrain, the fae who found me ten years ago, used plenty of both.

  Kyol shakes his head. “The remnants wouldn’t follow a false-blood so easily. We’re dealing with a fae who is charismatic and smart. I think it’s likely he was one of Atroth’s officers or he was rising in the ranks quickly. He’s looking for a Descendant who can rival your bloodline, but he hasn’t yet found one who’s willing to take the throne.”

  No one here misses hearing the “yet.” We’re on borrowed time. I don’t know how Lena’s going to make the high nobles confirm her as queen, but she needs to come up with something soon. I wish I had a suggestion, but fae politics are beyond me. Plus, I have another problem to add to our list.

  “There’s something else we need to talk about,” I say. “The remnants abducted Paige.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Kyol stiffen. He looks at me, but I keep my gaze focused on Lena, and say, “They put a ward on her purse and left it at my apartment for me to find. That’s why they showed up when I was there.”

  “And Paige is…” Lena asks.

  “My friend. We went to her sister’s wedding.” “Went to” is stretching it. We were there for, like, five minutes because Aren wanted a public place—one filled with humans—to exchange me for Lena after the Court captured her. “I need your help finding her.”

  She stares at me for a good five seconds before she turns and sits on the top step of the dais. If she didn’t look so weary, I’d be annoyed by her lack of reaction. Still, I have to get Paige back.

  “What do you want me to do?” she asks. “Assign a hundred fae to search the entire Realm for a single human? Shall I assign a hundred more to search Earth?”

  “Lena,” Aren interjects, stepping to my side.

  “What?” she snaps. “The remnants attacked the palace because they knew I’d divert resources to save her.”

  I manage to draw in a slow breath and count to three before responding, but only because I know she’s stressed and hasn’t been getting much sleep.

  “You could offer a trade,” I say. “They took her for a reason. You could at least attempt to—”

  “And who should I trade?” she demands. “You?”

  Lena and I have never been friends. We probably never will be, and our tolerance for each other has its ups and downs. If she didn’t need my shadow-reading talent and I didn’t need her to bring some kind of stability to the Realm, we would have nothing to do with each other. But the fact is, she does need me, and I need her. I need her to end this war so that I can have some hope of living a seminormal human life.

  “If it comes down to that, yes,” I tell her.

  I feel Aren turn toward me—I’m sure he has a few things to say about a trade—but I don’t look away from Lena, not until her gaze focuses behind me. I glance over my shoulder and see Jacia, daughter of Srillan, limping our way. She’s a former Court fae, one of almost a hundred Kyol convinced to support Lena. She also happens to be the woman King Atroth wanted Kyol to form a life-bond with. That never happened because he was in love with me. I wonder if it’s a possibility now. She’s strong and beautiful, with long, black hair braided over one shoulder and the brightest silver eyes I’ve ever seen.

  “We need a healer,” she says in Fae. Her voice is monotone, but not tight, which is a surprise since she’s left a trail of blood behind her. The jaedric armor protecting her left thigh hangs on by just one lace.

  “There’s still fighting at the veligh?” Lena demands. She rises from her seat on the dais’s top step to glare at Kyol. “Why are you here?”

  “I needed to…” He stops, glances my way before clearing his throat. “I needed to know what was happening here.”

  Translation: he needed to know I was safe.

  Almost as an afterthought, he adds, “You sent your guards to the veligh. I’m here because you cannot be left unprotected.”

  “One thing we can agree on,” Aren mutters as he walks to Jacia and peers down at her injury. He pulls off the jaedric leg shield, then slips his hand through the rip in her blood-soaked pants so he can heal the gash in her leg.

  Only Aren, Lena, and a handful of other fae have the ability to heal. It’s one of the only endangered magics that I wish was more common. Some of the others, like the ability to read minds or to cast darkness, are less beneficial, more terrifying. The king and the majority of the Realm think humans and our culture and artifacts have been weakening the fae’s magic over the generations. They blame my people for making gate-building and a few other magics—magics that I’m not certain ever existed in the first place—extinct.

  Jacia’s gaze moves from Aren to me. I have no idea if she knows why Kyol rejected a life-bond with her. We tried to hide our feelings for each other, but I’m sure some people were suspicious. But then, maybe life-bonds are rejected often? Fae are able to sense each other through the magical bindings, and if it’s a good pairing, they’re able to use more magic without becoming exhausted. The biggest drawback is that life-bonds are permanent; even if the c
ouple splits up, the magical bond remains. I’m pretty sure the only way to end one is for one of the fae involved to die. That would definitely discourage me from agreeing to one.

  “Jacia,” Lena says. “What’s happening at the veligh?”

  Jacia says the situation is under control, but if I’m translating her words correctly, the remnants were close to breaking through our defenses. A portion of the silver wall was damaged from flames thrown by a fae.

  That fae had to be powerful to be able to manipulate fire like that. Trev is a fire-wielder, one powerful enough to throw flames, and Lena can do something similar with air, but most fae who are able to manipulate the elements can only create small, temporary flames or a soft puff of wind. I hate knowing that the remnants have such powerful people supporting them.

  When Aren finishes healing Jacia, Lena questions her further. They’ll need to erect a scaffold to support the wall until a more permanent fix can be made. Aren and Lena discuss who will be in charge of that project, then they switch to another subject, then another. When they start talking about the books that contain a registry of fae names and magical abilities, I glance at Kyol, but he seems very determined not to look my direction.

  A resigned sigh escapes from me. It’s a familiar feeling, being pushed to the side like this.

  Without a word, I leave the king’s hall.

  FOUR

  FOR TEN YEARS, I kept my human life separate from my life as a shadow-reader. I let my parents believe I was crazy because it was forbidden to tell them about the fae, and I was on academic probation almost my entire time in college because I couldn’t keep my grades up. Except for Paige, I’ve been friendless this entire time. But I accepted all of that. I accepted everything because it was best that humans not know anything about the fae. It would endanger the Realm, and I didn’t want to drag anyone else into its wars.

  My precautions and sacrifices did a hell of a lot of good. They didn’t protect Paige.

  “McKenzie.”

  I’m surprised to hear Aren’s voice behind me, but I don’t slow down. I pull at the bindings of my cuirass as I stride through a corridor that follows the palace’s exterior wall.

  “Hey,” he says, forcing me to stop when he cuts off my path. “Hey. Lena will help you.”

  I sidestep around him, pulling at the bindings again. The damn knot tightens.

  “I’ll talk to her,” he says, falling into step beside me.

  “Don’t bother.”

  Aren grabs my arm, turns me toward him. “She’s exhausted. She misses Sethan, and the nobles aren’t cooperating with her on anything, but she will help, McKenzie. I’ll help.”

  “Lena won’t help because she shouldn’t.” I pull my arm free but don’t try to move past him again.

  Aren tilts his head to the side. “She shouldn’t?”

  “No.” The air whooshes out of my lungs. Sometimes, I really hate being reasonable. “She has to think about what’s best for the rebels—for the entire Realm, really. Paige is only one person, and she’s human. She’s not Lena’s responsibility. She’s mine.”

  “McKenzie.” Aren’s voice is laced with a warning.

  “What?”

  “Don’t try to get her back on your own,” he says. He reaches out to help me untie my cuirass’s bindings.

  “I wasn’t planning to.”

  His silver eyes meet mine. “I know that expression, nalkin-shom. You have a plan.”

  Nalkin-shom. Shadow-witch. The title should irritate me. Instead, it makes my stomach flip. The fae have called me nalkin-shom behind my back for years. I didn’t know that until Aren told me fae children have nightmares about me. Their parents tell them no one can escape the nalkin-shom, that if they misbehave, I’ll read their shadows, I’ll suck their magic dry. I still think he’s exaggerating. I might be the best at what I do—when I read a fae’s shadows, they almost never escape—but I’m not a monster.

  Aren’s not looking at me like I’m a monster. Somehow, he makes shadow-witch sound like a term of endearment.

  “I don’t have a plan,” I tell him. Not yet, at least.

  He raises an eyebrow.

  “I don’t,” I say, maybe a little defensively. Aren just shakes his head with that little half smirk I used to find infuriating. It’s not infuriating anymore. It’s alluring.

  The bindings of my armor finally loosen, and Aren helps me lift it over my head. My hair gets caught on something. Aren gently pulls it free before setting the cuirass aside, then he lets my loose ponytail slide from his hand. When he does, his fingertips graze my neck. It’s a brief, accidental contact, but my edarratae react instantly. By the way Aren’s gazing down at me, it’s obvious he felt the lightning’s heat, too.

  “Jorreb,” someone says, surprisingly close to us. Fae have better hearing than humans, but Aren stiffens just enough to indicate that the nearness of the fae startles him, too. He takes a step away from me as he turns toward Jacia.

  Her silver eyes move briefly to me before settling back on Aren. “Lena wishes for the shadow-reader to speak to Naito.”

  A muscle in Aren’s cheek twitches. “It’s only been two weeks.”

  Two weeks since Naito’s lover, Kelia, died. My throat tightens. Kelia was the rebel fae who taught me to speak their language. She was almost a friend, and I envied her relationship with Naito, a human shadow-reader. Despite some bumpy times, they were happy together—they were good together—but Naito’s father, a hateful man determined to eradicate the fae, killed Kelia the day we took the palace. Naito hasn’t been the same since.

  “Lena needs him in the watch rotation,” Jacia says. “And she needs him to read the shadows.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” I say, even though I agree it’s too soon. But I haven’t seen Naito in several days. I want to see how he’s doing.

  Aren looks at me. I think he wants to protest. Instead, he says, “I need to help secure the veligh. I don’t know when I’ll see you again.”

  This is the problem with starting a relationship in the middle of a war. Including today, I’ve seen him only three times since I ended my relationship with Kyol. For us to work out, I need time to get to know him. The thing is, it’s very possible we won’t have that time. Despite the way Aren acts sometimes, he’s not invincible. I’m certainly not, either.

  My gaze goes to Jacia. I don’t know her at all. I don’t know her view on human and fae relationships or if she would rat us out to a high noble if I wrapped my arms around Aren. That’s what I want to do. I want to forget our responsibilities and run away to somewhere remote and quiet, someplace where we can be normal and sit and talk and…do other things.

  Aren must know the direction my thoughts are heading. The half smile he gives me is both an apology and a promise. “I’ll find you as soon as I can.”

  After he leaves with Jacia, I have to assure myself a dozen times that he’s going to be okay and that I will see him again. Then I start looking for Naito. Surprisingly, he’s difficult to find. A human with lightning-covered skin kind of sticks out in this world, but I check his room, do a quick walk-through of the sculpture garden, and search a few other locations where he’s likely to be, all without any success. I finally start asking the English-speaking fae—we decided it’s best that the high nobles don’t know I’ve learned their language—if they’ve seen him. After half a dozen negative responses, someone tells me Naito’s in the royal archives. I clarify that with the fae more than once, though, thinking he must have misunderstood me. Humans aren’t allowed in the archives. At least, they weren’t under Atroth’s reign. Eventually, though, I head in that direction because I don’t know where else to look.

  “McKenzie.” Kavok smiles when he opens the door. I can’t help but smile in return. I’ve always liked the archivist. He’s dedicated to his job. So dedicated he didn’t leave the palace when Lena gave the Court fae the opportunity, and when I worked for the king, he was one of the few fae who was always willing to talk to me. That’s mainl
y because he’s so curious about humans. Whenever he had the chance, he questioned me about my life and my world, and sometimes, he told me a few things about his.

  “Hi, Kavok,” I say, looking into archives behind him. Drawers line the walls of the large room. The symbols on them are illuminated by hanging orbs, which are lit with magic. The combination of blue and white lightning inside them creates a steady, slightly tinted glow that doesn’t damage documents like the sun or lights from my world would. But that’s not the only thing that preserves the records in here. Kavok can, to a certain extent, control the weather. It’s a useful magic, one that’s in high demand. Farmers employ fae who can tweak the weather if there’s a drought, and the former king used to use them to darken the sky when he thought it would give the Court fae the advantage during an attack. Kavok, though, uses his ability to regulate the temperature of the archives. He keeps humidity out, too, and from what I’ve heard, some documents in here look like they were created yesterday even though they’re centuries old.

  “It’s good to see you,” he says. Then, his face brightens even more. “I found an earlier reference.”

  I have no idea what he’s talking about, but he turns to the desk that’s just to the left of the door. At least, I think there’s a desk under the mountains of papers, thick, leather-bound tomes, and haphazard stacks of anchor-stones. An entire alcove in here is set aside for storing the latter. Locations both here and on Earth are kept in drawers in case the king needed fae to fissure somewhere they’d never been before.

  After a minute of shuffling through the piles, Kavok looks up.

  “Come in,” he says.

  Carefully, I step over the threshold. I feel the atmosphere change when I do. It’s dryer and cooler than the corridor. “I thought humans weren’t allowed in here?”

  He shrugs. “New ruler, new rules. Ah, yes. Sixteen hundred ninety-one years ago—our years, not yours. That’s the earliest mention I’ve come across. It corresponds with…”